


Kanaya: Love

by muchlessvermillion



Series: Alternian Nights [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, minor depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 19:12:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10367475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muchlessvermillion/pseuds/muchlessvermillion
Summary: Kanaya loves with her hands. It's the easiest way for her to do it.Kanaya pushes and pulls and makes things better, even if it means wringing herself dry.





	

Kanaya loves with her hands. It’s the easiest way for her to do it. 

She loves with nimble fingers on needles, sewing closed rips in clothes and skin made by training and swords and near-misses. She loves with her palms smoothing over rumpled hair and fevered foreheads, touching shaking shoulders and brushing lines over slumped backs. She loves with a protective sweep of a chainsaw, fists clenched tight around the handles, standing firm in front of the people she means to save. 

She loves with her hands, and it is so much simpler than always knowing the right words to say, so much more active. Nothing she can say with her mouth can heal like what she can do with her hands. They’re the quickest part of her, the deftest, the bit that speaks the loudest and says the most. Talking only works for some- Karkat can be soothed with words, but prefers gentle hands to go along with it, likes the closeness of cool skin and the reminder that he’s real; Nepeta prefers action, works better with someone helping her along with something physical, has anxiety calmed by Kanaya sitting near her and working too to show someone else shares a goal; Sollux doesn’t like to be touched at his worst, is best left alone, but she does what she can with her fingers, makes food to leave outside his door, refills the dusty water glass at his side, even when he hardly glances at her. Soft touches to the shoulders, elbows, sides of recruits, guiding and showing and shaping, redirecting their efforts, changing their stance to something low-impact and geared towards drawing better blood. Kanaya loves with her hands, and she loves hard, and she loves thoroughly, and she is at the back of every effort the revolution makes, her midblood-cool fingers smoothing a blanket over Karkat’s sleeping figure as he slumps at his desk, shoving a pillow under Equius as he sits on the floor and tinkers with the signal blockers for hours on end, clutching borrowed scimitars to spar with Nepeta, keep her sharp. She filters through half-hearted revolutionaries and plants, she types out inquiring messages to Eridan when he comes within range, her hands build warriors and fell enemies, her hands still those who shake with fear and rage and anxiety before a rally. 

Kanaya loves with her hands. And when they tremble alone in her room, when they don’t work right on keyboard or needle or handle, when they feel clumsy and large and not good enough, she puts them at her sides and she tries to think forward, to all they can achieve, to all there is left to do. If Kanaya stops loving with her hands, the effort will fall. It takes all of them, it takes all they can do, it takes building networks and grooming recruits and keeping Karkat sane and present and up front and writing. 

It takes Kanaya, and it takes her loving, nimble, clever hands. So when she worries, when she feels inadequate and overlarge and small at once, when she wonders if it’s worth it and what she would be doing if she wasn’t here, she lets someone else take her hand in theirs, and she takes back some of the love she’s given, ready to recycle it back into the movement until there’s nothing left.


End file.
